A Better Life for Their Children with Andrew Feiler and Wanda Lloyd

Wednesday, April 21, 2021 - 7:00pm

A Better Life for Their Children: Julius Rosenwald, Booker T. Washington, and the 4,978 Schools That Changed America

By Andrew Feiler 

Please join us for the continuation of our Zoom Webinar Author Series! We are joined by Andrew Feiler who will be in conversation with Wanda Lloyd about his new book.

RSVP HERE

Born to Jewish immigrants, Julius Rosenwald rose to lead Sears, Roebuck & Company and turn it into the world's largest retailer. Born into slavery, Booker T. Washington became the founding principal of Tuskegee Institute. In 1912 the two men launched an ambitious program to partner with black communities across the segregated South to build public schools for African American children. This watershed moment in the history of philanthropy-one of the earliest collaborations between Jews and African Americans-drove dramatic improvement in African American educational attainment and fostered the generation who became the leaders and foot soldiers of the civil rights movement.

A Better Life for their Children includes eighty-five duotone images that capture interiors and exteriors, schools restored and yet-to-be restored, and portraits of people with unique, compelling connections to these schools. Brief narratives written by Feiler accompany each photograph, telling the stories of Rosenwald schools' connections to the Trail of Tears, the Great Migration, the Tuskegee Airmen, Brown v. Board of Education, embezzlement, murder, and more. Beyond the photographic documentation, A Better Life for Their Children includes essays from three prominent voices. Congressman John Lewis, who attended a Rosenwald school in Alabama, provides an introduction; preservationist Jeanne Cyriaque has penned a history of the Rosenwald program; and Brent Leggs, director of African American Cultural Heritage at the National Trust for Historic Preservation, has written a plea for preservation that serves as an afterword.

Event address: 
Zoom Webinar
Savannah, GA 31401
Books: 
A Better Life for Their Children: Julius Rosenwald, Booker T. Washington, and the 4,978 Schools That Changed America By Andrew Feiler, John Lewis (Foreword by), Jeanne Cyriaque (Contribution by) Cover Image
By Andrew Feiler, John Lewis (Foreword by), Jeanne Cyriaque (Contribution by)
$36.95
ISBN: 9780820358413
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 Days
Published: University of Georgia Press - May 1st, 2021